Under new leadership, Boston Underground Film Festival still rejects the status quo

For 25 years, horror and genre fans have counted on Boston Underground Film Festival to push the limits of cinema. Whether offensive, exploitive or just plain odd, Phil Healy said the formula-busting fest “is a beautiful place to find out who you want to be as a viewer.”

At this year’s 26th annual BUFF, running March 18-22 at the Brattle and Coolidge Corner Theatres, Healy and long-time creative collaborator Adam Van Voorhis will discover who they want to be as the festival’s new co-directors.

In anticipation, Healy said he can’t wait for opening night’s small town sheriff shoot-em-up “Normal,” co-written by and starring Bob Odenkirk, with Odenkirk in attendance. Healy’s love of the darkly comedic actor started in the 1990s with “The Ben Stiller Show” and “Mr. Show with Bob and David” (which he watched after midnight with his sister when they weren’t supposed to). “I'm beside myself,” said Healy. “I will be on my best behavior.”

Whereas Van Voorhis pointed to closing night’s colossal martial arts showdown “The Furious” as “1,000% my speed.”

If it sounds like they “get” BUFF inside and out, they do. About 15 years ago, they made what Healy describes as an “aggressively stupid” short film called “Vampire!” In it, a sweet-faced couple holds hands, plays footsy and shares a soda shop malt. Everything’s coming up romance until Healy, outfitted in a black velvet cape and powder-white hair, runs into frame, screams “Vampire!” and ends their reveries with a shock of splattered blood.

They brought “Vampire!” to Boston Open Screen, an open-mic night for filmmakers, and a friend told them it was perfect for BUFF. “I was like, ‘Alright, I don’t know what that is, but sure,’” said Healy. With filmmaker badges in hand, they saw everything. They heard the fest needed technical help and the following year, in 2013, became part of BUFF’s all-volunteer crew. They also liked Open Screen well enough to start hosting (which they do to this day), with events held monthly at the Coolidge.

As Healy summed it up, “We got our hands in every pie in the city.”

Though BUFF bounced around locations for the first half of its existence, its roots intertwine with the Coolidge’s. This year, Coolidge artistic director Mark Anastasio takes on the role as BUFF’s new artistic director. Plus, the fest added the Coolidge as a venue. (The Brattle still hosts most screenings. It had been BUFF’s sole home since 2012, when programming director Nicole McControversy and artistic director Kevin Monahan began their tenure. After a bang-up 25th year, the two stepped back to pursue other endeavors in independent film.)

Anastasio said in the past, he mostly attended BUFF as a film fan, including for the premiere of Healy and Van Voorhis’s 2014 award-winning documentary “My Name is Jonah.” Anastasio said he joined BUFF leadership partly as a nod to David Kleiler, known for saving the Coolidge from a wrecking ball in 1989. (Kleiler and Dima Ballin launched BUFF in 1999 as an offshoot of an overnight film marathon.)

“David's voice was frequently on my phone and on my voicemail, supporting me,” said Anastasio about his early years programming “weirder films” at the Coolidge. Those messages acknowledged when films didn't make a ton of money, explained Anastasio. Then Kleiler would add, ‘But it was great that you had it on screen. I loved it. Everybody I know that came to see it loved it. Please keep fighting the good fight.’

Anastasio credits BUFF’s part in the “good fight” to playing the “truly underground, sort of scary stuff.” Films that most festivals would immediately reject. This year, that means debut features like “Sugar Rot,” which involves sexual assault, mutant pregnancy, bodily transmogrification and — ice cream.

Healy said Becca Kozak’s take on feminist horror is the kind of filth that he loves, “because of its lack — in a positive way — of body shame.”

Incoming BUFF programming and operations manager Kim Baillargeon can’t wait for another debut feature, the campy, crampy “Cramps! A Period Piece” by Brooke H. Cellars, where one woman’s uterus and mind duke it out for ultimate control. “Feminist body horror, I’m always down for that,” said Baillargeon. She fell hard for the festival as the Brattle’s operations manager from 2016 to 2024. “I would have to test the movies, and I would have a hard time stopping watching,” she said.

Both Kozak and Cellars will attend for Q&As after their respective films screen, something Van Voorhis said is a priority for the festival, because “we love supporting first-time filmmakers.”  The new leadership team also wants audience members to know they’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to build in extra time across the program  for post-film conversations, 20-30 minutes versus a standard 10-15.

That makes sense since an astounding number of filmmakers are expected to attend the 22 total screenings. A high percentage of the 35 people representing the 56 total shorts live and work in New England. That’s the case for all of the filmmakers in “The Dunwich Horrors” program, including writer-director Miriam Olken, whom Healy admiringly calls “one of the hardest-working gals in the business.”

Olken grew up in rural New Hampshire, devouring DVD extras, and realized, “Oh, I could do that, too.” As an adult she has worked on dozens of studio and independent film sets, and volunteered at several Boston area festivals, including BUFF. There she discovered, “The audience was authentic and special and weird, and they were like me.”

The world premiere of her fictional short “JAW” marks her third visit to BUFF as a filmmaker; she previously showed horror shorts “Petunia” and “Followers.” Olken doesn’t want to say too much about the plot of her new film. But it took her more than three years to make because she didn’t think anyone wanted to hear her “kvetch and complain” about something that really happened.

Then, she realized the events had broader resonance. “I infused all the horrible, nasty things that have been said about me, dealing with antisemitism, and being a woman, and being bullied, and I put it all into my villain's mouth,” she said. Flipping the script felt powerful, said Olken, and other women on set felt that power, too. She can't wait to share it with the "die-hard fans" at BUFF. For her, "that is the dream."

That fandom can remain the same, even with new BUFF leadership, because this year promises the same old unfamiliar. “You can boil BUFF down to its core as a rejection of the status quo,” said Healy, “but it’s more an acceptance of all who truly love cinema and love expression.”